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Blood Stained Sanctuary
Sacred Grounds is a secret stage in Cave Story. It is also the hardest stage. It is prison of Ballos, and by destroying Ballos, the island will be saved. Alongside the destruction of Ballos, Misery and Balrog will be freed. Sacred Grounds is also called "Blood-Stained Sanctuary", or by some fans, "Running Hell", due to it being timed and a sign saying "Welcome to Hell!". Strategy First Room The first area isn't too hard. There are two ways to get through the first challenge it presents you. First, you can use as much of the jetpack as you want to go to the left, avoiding the spikes. When you reach the wall, drop down. You will fall onto some small spirkes that only do 5 damage. Jump from there and use the short-term invincibility to get up to the next platform. To save health, you can move towards the left wall with tiny boosts, boost to the right and then up. This is a tiny bit harder, but you will definitely need all the health you can get, and you'll be used to this strategy in no time. Use the energy crystals given to level up your main weapon -- Snake works the best for the Sacred Grounds, because it can go through walls -- and if you collect the two earlier capsules it should reach level 2. Fall down. As early as possible, boost to the left, and fall down the tunnel at the far left using the least amount of fuel you can manage without hitting the spikes. The tunnel contains four more capsules. If you collect all of them -- this takes practice and requires perfect timing -- the Snake should level up to level 3. The boost to the left would have drained almost all of your fuel, but if you've done it right there will still be just enough left to boost to the right onto a safe platform at the end of the tunnel -- this is necessary due to the spikes at the bottom -- where you will find a bonus life capsule. Your health should now be 50/55 (or 55/55 if you used the latter aforementioned strategy). Drop down and boost to the right -- Here you will find Curly. Bring her with you and exit the room. Second Room This room is the reason you need to start with maxed HP, but you can get full HP back by grabbing the hearts to the right, and jumping back up to the last room and back down and grabbing it again, rinse and repeat. Stay with the Snake for now -- It doesn't matter all that much if it levels down. Kill the little angel things (Butes), but make sure your focus is on avoiding the blocks. Make as much use of the jetpack as you can to avoid said blocks, which do 10 damage. This room is only difficult if you have low HP to start with. It's a long level, and most of it is the same. Third Room This is a fairly hard and long level. Firstly, there are two hearts to the right of the starting position, and if you stand right on the leftmost edge of the starting platform, some more Butes come down. These can be easily shot, and will give energy crystals to re-level your Snake and maybe extra hearts. Pick up everything, then boost back up to the previous stage, then immediately drop down again. The stream of Butes and the hearts will have respawned. Collect them, and repeat until you have maxed health and maxed weapon energy for your main weapon. At this point, Curly will wake up. She has a level 1 Nemesis. She will fire exactly when you do, in the opposite direction, with the exception of when you're standing on the ground, when she will fire up as well. There are three Presses to the left. Shoot the first two with the Snake, then go down and take out all the Butes with swords. Stand under the third Press and shoot as fast as you can. It's important to leave the hearts in this level if you're maxed out, so you can get them later if you take damage. There will be an archer Bute on the next platform. Avoid its arrows, then run underneath it and shoot it. Boost onto the platform above you. This will have two large block-throwing angels (Mesas) on it and some archers. Nemesis should take care of them, but swap to Super Missiles immediately after you beat them so you can level that up too, for the Heavy Press. There will be an octagonal enemy to your left as well as below you through a wall. Shoot them both, and don't be too close when they've finished counting down. Then, go further to the left, being very careful to dodge the arrows shot by two Butes. Some more Butes will spawn when you drop down to the same level. Beat them all, then move to the third chamber. This contains two rolling enemies, which are invincible, and another octagonal one. Do the same thing as with the other octagonal ones. Don't stand right in the middle of the chamber either, because then it will be impossible to jump the rolling enemies. Fire straight up as you move further to the left to take out the archers above you. This next bit is tricky. There is some good cover, containing a heart. From here, it should be possible to take out the first Mesa. Dodge the arrows, and then take out the other two Mesas to your right. Your way is blocked, so you'll need to climb the tower above you. Use the Snake to get rid of the archers above you. Destroy the octagon at the top of the tower. When you do this, another stream of those easy Butes will appear. The next chamber has a Mesa and an archer at the top right, and archers in alcoves on both sides. Stand just past the top of the tower and shoot down to take out the first lot of archers. Swap to Nemesis, because that has longer range, to take out the archer and block thrower in front of you. Go straight to where the block thrower was, switch back, and fire down to kill the rest of the archers. The next room has three octagon enemies. When you go onto the first platform here, some Butes will appear out of the ground. Curly's fire will destroy the octagon enemy behind you, but that's ok. When you're done with that, some more Butes will try to come through the gap with crazy speed. Make sure you've got them all before you move on to the next step. Destroy the middle one of the three octagons now. Two archers will shoot arrows at you, but they're not too hard to dodge past through the gap. The jetpack has just enough fuel to make you land on another platform close to the end. There are two octagon enemies blocking the way through, and when you land on the platform, two streams of Butes will appear; one out of the ceiling to the left and one out of the floor to the right. You often get hurt here. When both octagons and all the Butes are out, get rid of the two archers. Swap to Nemesis to destroy a star block at the top of the screen. This star block obscures a missiles upgrade, which adds 24 missiles, making your maximum now 54. Backtracking Go back and get enough hearts to take you back to full. To recap, here is a list of all of them: -Two at the beginning of the level. -Two are obscured by the presses at the beginning -The next two are in plain sight. -Two are obscured by star blocks on the second floor of that chamber. -One's with the good cover where you hid from the block-thrower. -Two more are next to the spikes at the base of the tower. -Three are in the archers' alcoves. You'll be able to get back to full if you lost 26 or less HP on this level. For tips on trying to kill Ballos, see his page . Trivia *There is a sign in Sacred Grounds that says "Welcome to Hell!" *A chest with 24 max missles upgrade can be found. **The aforementioned chest contains a 100 max missiles upgrade if you don't have a missile launcher at that point. Category:Locations